Investigators take samples from sand near a part of a missile that was suspected of carrying chemical agents in the countryside of Ain Terma, Syria, in August. / AP

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

Syria will miss a second deadline to turn over its chemical weapons components for destruction Wednesday amid a British report that Bashar Assad's regime is stockpiling the weaponry for use in case the country is partitioned.

Syria has delivered only a small fraction of the most dangerous components of its chemical weapons â?? sarin, mustard and VX gases â?? all of which were supposed to be handed over by Dec. 31. Delivery of all the less-dangerous industrial chemical components is supposed to be complete by Wednesday.

To date, only 4% of its chemical weapons components have been delivered to the port of Latakia to be loaded onto ships and transported for destruction abroad.

"They're not going to make that timeline. either," said Michael Luhan, a spokesman for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which is overseeing the dismantling of Syria's illicit weapons program.

The mission, which started off strong last fall, "has reached a kind of a stasis at the moment," Luhan said.

A report in the Times of London cited unnamed Russian and Israeli sources saying Syria is working with Iran and North Korea to upgrade its stockpile to use an "insurance policy" or deterrent to defend Assad's Alawite homeland in northwestern Syria from being overrun by regime opponents.

Emanuele Ottolenghi, an analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the report has not been confirmed but that it wouldn't be a surprise because such behavior "is in character" for the Assad regime.

"The regime wasn't admitting to even having CW (chemical weapons) until the deal was struck last September," Ottolenghi said. "Those weapons were always an insurance policy for regime survival, and it's therefore doubtful that the regime would give them up."

Syrian officials have cited safety concerns for the delay and issued a list of items to preserve convoys of trucks as they transport hundreds of tons of material cross-country in the midst of civil war. They've asked for armored troop carriers and armored sleeves to fit around shipping containers loaded with canisters of chemicals.

The State Department has dismissed the Syrian request as foot dragging.

"The regime has every tool they need in order to deliver on their promise of moving the chemical weapons to the port at Latakia," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki. "That is the step they need to take."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov has said that Syria plans to send a large shipment of toxic agents out of the country this month and can remove all its chemical stockpile by March 1, according to a Reuters report.

Russia helped broker the Sept. 14 disarmament agreement in return for a U.S. pledge not to carry out military strikes after the White House determined that Assad used chemical weapons Aug. 21 in an attack that killed an estimated 1,400 civilians in a Damascus suburb, crossing a red line set a year earlier by President Obama.

Some 130,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war.

The plan called for Syria to declare its chemical weapons stockpiles and production facilities and to destroy them or deliver components for destruction. The entire process is to be complete by June 30.

Syria declared 1,430 tons of chemical weapons materials. All declared equipment and munitions have been destroyed under OPCW monitoring, and now the chemicals need to be transported to Latakia to be shipped to a U.S. vessel that will destroy most of the remaining material, according to the OPCW.

Some analysts say the delays could be related to more mundane motivations.

The Syrian government could be "trying to slow roll" the process in order to obtain more equipment that can be used for military purposes after it's over, said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, which promotes arms-control agreements.

It may also be seeking to keep equipment that would be manufactured in Syria, to benefit the regime's political allies in tough economic times, Kimball said.

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